


Glitch

by anactoria



Series: New Year 2013 Fic(let)s [4]
Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: Arguing, Crack, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things can't be fixed. Some things shouldn't be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thurste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thurste/gifts).



> For Thurste, who requested Adrian/Dan fic where for once, it's Dan who makes Adrian lose his temper.
> 
> Many thanks to Keeva for the beta!

The penthouse is dark and silent as Adrian steps out of the elevator. When he flicks on the light there’s no answering “Hey,” no sleepy mumble as Dan wakes up on the couch or in the bedroom and tries to pretend he hasn’t been napping. Dan must still be in the workshop; he loses track of time easily when he’s absorbed in a project.

That’s okay. It’s been a long day, packed with meetings of the most trying kind, and Adrian hasn’t yet had time to catch up with the results of the current round of disarmament talks. They should go well, but the unpredictability inherent in human nature—its irrationality—is never far from his mind. He won’t breathe easily until he has confirmation. Really, he wants nothing more than to loosen his tie and sit down in front of the news with a steaming cup of chai. 

He toes off his shoes, pads into the kitchen to heat some water, then returns to the den and switches on the TV.

At least, that’s what he _intends_ to do. When he presses the button on the remote, though, the screen remains stubbornly blank. He tries again. Checks that the set is plugged in at the socket, and tries yet again. Nothing.

Adrian sighs, scrubs at his eyes with one hand, and mashes a few buttons at random with the other—more out of frustration than any real belief that it will make a difference. The TV doesn’t come on. But the lights dim, and a voice, sweet and delicate as cotton candy, drifts from the speakers in the back corners of the room:

_Summertime  
and the livin’ is easy…_

He recognises the song, though it’s not from his own, paltry music collection. It’s one that Dan listens to a lot.

The pieces click into place, then. 

Really, it’s a rather nice idea, and any other evening, he’d even find it charming. If only Dan had chosen to repurpose some _other_ bit of gadgetry to make it happen. Adrian pushes a few more buttons on the remote, but can’t recall the random pattern he pressed in a moment ago. The lights stay down, and the song keeps playing.

A thought occurs to him, then. Perhaps if Dan altered the TV remote to control the lighting and the stereo, he’s altered something else to control the TV? Not the most logical thing to do, perhaps, but then that’s not how Dan works. He often lets his little projects spiral and change shape, altering bits and pieces and adding ideas as he goes along rather than working to an overall plan.

Adrian picks up the video remote, aims it at the TV, and presses the ‘on’ button. For a moment, nothing happens.

Then, he hears a soft ‘click’ behind him, just barely audible over the music. He turns where he stands, just in time to see one of the wall tiles slide aside, revealing a hidden compartment.

Out of it flies a tiny, bronze-coloured remote device with a blinking light on the front. It hovers before Adrian’s face for a moment—apparently scanning him, but affording him the chance to scrutinize it himself at the same time. It’s clearly been custom-built, and the careful workmanship bears all of Dan’s hallmarks. 

When it’s done, it beeps once, and moves on. Half-bemused, half-fascinated, Adrian watches it go, gliding around the room as though in time to the music.

( _One of these days,_ the song goes on  
 _you're gonna rise up singing_ …)

The remote pauses before the window, and Adrian realises it must have picked up the movement of a bird outside. There’s a momentary silence as it hovers, scans—and then shoots out a beam of red light. 

Thankfully, it misses the window itself. It hits a potted fern standing on the windowsill, instead. Adrian sees it fall as if in slow-motion, but startlement slows his reactions, and he makes it across the room just as the whole thing hits the floor in a shower of dirt and ceramic shards. He jams down the power button on the control, and abruptly, the airborne device drops to the floor, skittering across the room and coming to a rest somewhere under the couch.

The intercom beside the front door is buzzing, Adrian realizes. He shakes his head wearily, then heads out into the hallway to answer it: “Yes?”

“Weinstock, sir.” His head of security. “Do you need any assistance? I thought I heard a crash.”

“No, thank you. Everything’s under control.” He pauses. “Though perhaps you could have one of the cleaners come up.”

“Yes, sir.” The intercom shuts off. 

Adrian drops the remote control onto the sofa, presses fingertips to his temples, and emphatically doesn’t kick the TV. The stereo is still playing softly:

_Your daddy’s rich_  
 _and your ma is good-looking_  
 _so hush little baby_  
 _don’t you cry._

 

\-----

 

It’s eight-thirty when Adrian wakes up. Late, by his standards, even for a Saturday. He spent much of the previous night on an urgent late-night call to Tokyo, and his head feels muzzy, an ache throbbing in his temples. He usually starts his day with green tea, but this morning, he _really_ needs coffee.

Dan’s side of the bed is empty. Adrian presses the flat of his hand to the sheets and finds them cold. Dan has had a sleepless night, then. Those usually end with his vanishing to distract himself by tinkering with his latest gadget or upgrade to Archie. Sometimes, Adrian follows and attempts to offer reassurance. More often, he deems it best to leave well alone, suspecting that the effect of his presence would be more deleterious than comforting.

Blinking away the last lingering shreds of sleep, he slips out from beneath the bedclothes, pulls on pajama pants, and pads through into the kitchen.

The coffeemaker is already switched on, and as Adrian finds a mug and places it underneath, he registers vaguely that the counter has been wiped down. They didn’t bother to clean up after supper last night, and his staff don’t work weekends. That occasions a faint throb of worry; if Dan has resorted to housework, he must have had a troubled night indeed.

Adrian swallows, trying his best to tamp down his anxiety. Raises his mug to his lips and takes a swallow.

Then makes an involuntary moue of disgust as sugar and synthetic cocoa assault his tastebuds.

He frowns into his mug. Pink and white miniature marshmallows float half-submerged in a revolting milk-and-syrup concoction. Adrian shakes his head.

“Oh, hey, you’re up.”

Dan is in sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt, his hair still tousled; he clearly hasn’t bothered to look in the mirror yet today. But he’s smiling, and Adrian can’t bring himself to undermine that by giving voice to his annoyance. So all he does is raise an eyebrow, and say, “Hot chocolate?” 

He prods at one of the marshmallows in the cup. It sinks below the surface of the chocolate and then bobs back up again.

“Damn, those probably aren’t even vegetarian, are they? Well.” Dan blushes. “The hot chocolate was kind of more for me. It does tea, too.” 

And Adrian has to smile back at him and say, “Thank you, Dan.” Still. “I _was_ rather hoping for a cup of coffee, however.”

“I didn’t get around to doing that yet,” Dan says. “Which I guess is kind of silly, with it being a coffee machine. I just didn’t—well, you don’t normally—well. Sorry. But still, you must have insta—” He breaks off. “Oh. Oh, no, of course you don’t.” He looks pained.

“It’s not a problem, Dan,” Adrian reassures him. He supposes he ought to think of this as a blessing in disguise, really. At his age, he certainly doesn’t need to be upping his caffeine intake. He hands the mug of chocolate to Dan with a smile. “Tea will be fine.”

 

\-----

 

_RAMESES II_

_Access denied._

_OZYMANDIAS_

_Access denied._

_PYRAMID_

_Access denied._

Adrian scrubs a hand across his eyes. “Dan!”

There’s no reply, and after a moment he gets out of his chair and makes his way down to Dan’s workshop. The radio is playing slow, melancholy jazz, the singer’s voice drifting like cigarette smoke through the air. Dan hums along under his breath—not entirely tunefully, it has to be said—as he works.

Adrian switches the music off. It takes Dan a moment to register the silence and look up from the communicator he’s fiddling with. He has that absent, peaceful look on his face that he gets when a project’s going well, and even though he really does urgently need those files, Adrian can’t help but feel sorry for breaking his concentration.

“Dan,” Adrian says, after a deep breath. “My computer password. I assume you know something about that?”

“Damn! I meant to write you a note—I must’ve forgotten.” Dan looks utterly contrite. “It’s just—so many companies are starting to use computer technology these days, and your passwords are really kind of easy to guess. I know the building has excellent security, but still—a random string of numbers is much more secure.”

“So you changed them.” Adrian manages a smile. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Dan pushes his glasses up his nose and smiles back at him. “I hope you don’t mind. I wrote them down, they’re just—” He turns to face the jumble of papers and tools scattered across the surface of his workbench, and the smile falls from his face.

Adrian suppresses a sigh.

 

\-----

 

Dan’s just tinkering, cleaning Archie’s control panel, replacing a couple of buttons that have come loose. He does that a lot, these days; tinkering. It keeps his hands busy and his mind semi-occupied, even if most of his ideas will never make it out of the workshop. 

Sure, he could sit up in the penthouse—watch Adrian’s widescreen TV, or take his pick from the library—but sitting in front of the TV reminds him too much of all those years he spent in forced retirement, growing softer and more useless by the day, and looking at Adrian’s books makes him miss his own collection, destroyed long ago along with his brownstone. Besides, half of them are rare or first editions, and Dan’s never quite comfortable touching them, worrying that he’ll tear the pages or leave marks, like a sticky-fingered kid in a museum. Worrying in a way that he never does in his workshop, where his hands are deft and steady, their movements possessed of a neat, comforting efficiency.

He keeps himself in shape—naturally, Adrian has an extensively-equipped private gym—but that kills a couple hours a day, at most. And he’s not exactly drowning in invitations to socialise. 

So, he tinkers.

Dan finishes with the control panel and wipes the surface and the buttons clean, looking over his handiwork with a degree of satisfaction.

And then, both of the monitor screens he’s recently installed above Archie’s front windows flicker into life.

Dan stares. From the screens above his head, Adrian stares back at him.

“What the _hell_?” Dan mutters, but then he’s interrupted by Adrian’s voice issuing from the speakers.

“Dan,” he says, “I trust that I’m not interrupting anything important. If I am, then I really am sorry.” A brief pause. “I’d be grateful if you’d come upstairs,” he goes on, and his customary half-smile fades a little. “We need to talk.”

At that, Dan feels his stomach turn over. Not just at those words, and the memory of what they meant the last time he heard them, from Laurie, but at the tone in which they’re spoken. Adrian’s voice is gentle, just like it always is, and it doesn’t waver once, but there’s an edge in it that Dan can’t quite place. And he remembers, suddenly, how easy it is to forget that his soft-spoken boyfriend might just be the most dangerous man on the planet.

He pulls off his gloves, and nods at the screen. “I’ll be right up.”

 

\-----

 

Adrian’s perched on the sofa in the den, holding a steaming mug of chai with both hands. There’s another mug sitting on the side-table, and Dan knows without looking that it contains coffee, made just the way he likes it. Well, Dan’s improvements to the coffee-maker are still working, even if it looks like everything else might be starting to go wrong—and oh, great, his brain is starting in with the babble already. He really must be feeling nervous.

Adrian sets down his tea as Dan approaches, and pats the sofa cushion beside him.

His expression is neutral—which, Dan knows, means absolutely nothing—but he’s removed his tie without bothering to change out of his suit. There are faint, dark smudges beneath his eyes, and he looks _weary_ in a way Dan only usually sees when Adrian’s been pushing himself too hard at work, or during the final few days of October, when he goes quiet and withdraws to some dark inner place where Dan can never quite reach him.

Watching him carefully, Dan sits down.

For a moment, Adrian doesn’t say anything, and Dan wonders whether he’s supposed to kick things off—ask what’s wrong, or maybe demonstrate latent psychic abilities by figuring it out before he’s told. But then Adrian fixes him with a look.

“Dan,” he says, quietly, “this has to stop.”

Dan blinks at him stupidly for a moment, as his stomach flip-flops and his brain swirls. Stop? Is this the breakup talk? And, Jesus, isn’t this kind of unfair? Adrian hasn’t so much as hinted to him that anything’s wrong before now.

“What do you mean?” he manages, when after a moment, Adrian hasn’t elaborated. “What—what has to stop?”

And then Adrian gestures at the coffee table. It’s littered with the guts of a dismembered alarm clock. Dan remembers taking it apart this morning, looking for parts. He’d meant to fix it later, but he must’ve gotten distracted with Archie.

“ _This_ ,” Adrian says, and Dan’s heart starts beating again. 

Adrian isn’t frowning, exactly, but a few lines of exasperation are beginning to wear through his composure, and Dan is profoundly glad to find that he’s had the presence of mind not to grin in relief.

“Ah,” he says. “Yeah, I should’ve fixed that. My bad.” He reaches for Adrian’s hand and squeezes it. “I’ll do it this evening. And it won’t happen again, okay?”

Adrian squeezes back. “Okay.”

But his smile is faint, and those lines around his eyes haven’t faded the way Dan was expecting them to. It occurs to him then that he doesn’t actually know what _is_ normal for Adrian when he gets annoyed, because he can count the number of times he’s seen Adrian show annoyance on the fingers of one hand, and the times it’s been directed at him are—well, almost never.

Dan bites his lip. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. It’s just—” Adrian heaves a sigh. “You don’t have to fix everything, Dan. Sometimes, things already work as well as they need to.” A pause. “Or, at least, as well as they ever will.”

Dan blinks, and opens his mouth around a half-formed question—something about who is Adrian to talk, and is he sure he’s not ill, because really, that’s the opposite of any sentiment he’s ever expected to hear Adrian come out with—and then his brain catches up and he gets it. 

He closes his mouth again, and takes a deep breath. 

“We’re not talking about the clock anymore, are we?” he says.

For a moment, Adrian doesn’t say anything. But he lowers his eyes, just slightly, and that and his silence are all the answer Dan needs.

“Look,” Dan goes on, “I fix things. I need to. It’s what I’ve always done, and I—well, I can’t be anything else.”

“And some things can’t be fixed, Dan.” Adrian’s voice is soft, now; the edge is gone. The subtext’s very present, though: _What happens when you realise I’m one of them?_

Dan places his free hand on top of Adrian’s. “And I know that,” he says. “And _that’s okay_.”

Adrian is silent, and Dan breathes out through his nose. He tries his best, in moments like this, he really does, but he can’t help feeling like trying to reassure Adrian is a fool’s game. There’s nothing true he can possibly say that Adrian hasn’t already thought of; no comforting lie he can offer that Adrian won’t see through. And that’s without the way he resents himself—resents both of them, sometimes, just for wanting to do it.

Still. Still—he does want.

He swallows. “Adrian, if I could fix you—I mean, if I could make you feel fine all the time and forget about the past and move on and whatever else that could mean—you know what?” He waits for Adrian to look up, to meet his eyes. “I wouldn’t.”

Adrian’s eyes widen—so minutely Dan wouldn’t have caught it if he weren’t looking for it. He stays quiet, though, and so Dan goes on:

“If you could be okay with everything that happened—with, with what you did—then you’d be what you always thought you were. You wouldn’t be human.” He drops his gaze. “So no, Adrian. I don’t want to fix you. If I could fix you, I couldn’t love you.” And then he squeezes his eyes shut, because Jesus, he didn’t mean for that to slip out. Not now, not like this, maybe not ever.

But Adrian doesn’t seize on it. He doesn’t push the subject any further at all, in fact. He just nods, and after a moment, says, “Thank you, Dan.” Then, with the tiniest of smiles: “I’d still appreciate a little heads-up next time you’re planning a technological experiment, however.”

Dan glances up, and Adrian’s face is carefully blank once more. He nods. “Sure,” he says, into the silence.

 

\-----

 

They go to bed early that night. They don’t have sex, or argue, or do much of anything at all. They lie still, side-by-side, in silence for long moments, until Dan can’t take it anymore and he reaches down to brush Adrian’s hand with his own beneath the covers.

Adrian’s breath hitches softly at the contact. Then he laces his fingers through Dan’s and holds on tight, tight, tight.

He doesn’t say anything, and Dan figures that’s probably for the best. Adrian might be the king of comforting words, but they can’t be salve for this. Some things you don’t heal. You breathe through them and you hope that maybe you’ll be lucky enough that time will soothe them in the end. And because you can’t make them better, you try to make everything else better, instead. Build up a little store of joy to set against them.

Dan is still clutching Adrian’s hand as he drifts into sleep. Still wondering if there’s any chance he’ll ever have enough of it to make a dent.

 

\-----

 

Dan emerges from his workshop around half past two the next afternoon, gasping for caffeine. He grabs his favourite mug (nondescript, a little chipped near the hands, but humungous enough to carry him through a couple hours) out of the cupboard, sets it under the coffee-maker, and presses in his order.

As he’s waiting for it to fill, he notices something on the counter-top.

A Veidt Enterprises ID card and access pass, face down. He frowns. Adrian’s? Not likely; it isn’t like him to leave it behind. Dan turns it over, and blinks when he sees his own photograph looking up at him.

There’s no note—maybe Adrian didn’t want to seem pushy, after last night—but it’s pretty clear what Dan’s supposed to do with it. Adrian’s taken him down to the R&D section before now, and he clearly didn’t do a great job hiding how much like a kid in candyland he felt. It was a struggle not to touch, or to dive right into bugging the staff with questions and suggestions. Really, it was only because they were new, then, and he was uncertain—even more uncertain than he is now—that he managed it at all. He’s half-entertained hopes of being invited back ever since, but somehow never managed to find the right moment to bring it up.

Dan drinks his coffee slowly, holding the card between his thumb and forefinger, frowning. Something opens up inside his chest, and he’s not sure what it is. He’s not sure what _this_ is. 

A way of getting him out of Adrian’s hair? Well, sure. He doesn’t really blame Adrian on that score. He knows the kind of chaos he can leave in his wake when he gets caught up in an idea, and he lived alone for so long that he’s never quite managed to adapt to sharing his home. Hell, that was one of the major reasons Laurie broke up with him.

An attempt to make him useful? He doesn’t do much other than hang around the apartment and his workshop tinkering, these days, but he still comes up with a decent idea now and then. It’d make sound business sense for Adrian to call first dibs on them. Dan doesn’t even think he’d mind that, not really. He kind of doubts that that’s it, though.

More likely—and he has to admit it to himself, even though it makes his heart sink—it’s a pity thing. An outlet for him. A way for him to fulfil that stupid need he has to feel like he’s doing something good. And he’s probably just about desperate enough to take it.

Dan heaves a sigh. Then he sets the card back down on the counter, and heads back to the workshop.

 

\-----

 

“You’d have your own lab. Your own team, if you like. Any project you’re interested in, I can give you access to. Or if you’d prefer to work on something from scratch, we can make that happen, too.”

Dan nods. “I need a little time to think it over.”

“Naturally, I wouldn’t expect to have first refusal on your designs. They’re yours; you should decide whether they’re to be put into production.”

“Actually,” Dan says, looking up at Adrian, “the moment I do make something that might be useful to people—if I do, and I’m not saying anything just yet—I want you to promise that you’ll use it.” He sighs. “I know it looks like I’m just playing around, sometimes—but that’s not what I want to be, you know. Just some bored rich guy amusing himself.”

Adrian reaches for his hand, then, and squeezes it. “You were always more than that.”

 

\-----

 

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Mmm?” Adrian glances up from his computer screen, and finds Dan standing in the doorway to his office, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets.

“I’ve been thinking,” Dan repeats, “and I’ve decided to accept your offer. I want to do this. For real.”

“Dan.” Adrian smiles, and something unlooses inside him, some knot of tension of which he hasn’t even been quite conscious. “That’s wonderful.”

Dan inclines his head. “In fact,” he says, “I’ve even finished my first project.” He withdraws his right hand from his pocket, pulling out a small object wrapped in tissue paper, and proffers it to Adrian.

It’s heavier than it looks. Adrian runs the pad of his thumb across the tissue paper, just lightly, not hard enough to wrinkle it. Dan’s giftwrapping is as neat and precise as one would expect: tape perfectly straight; corners folded just so.

Dan is watching him expectantly. “Go ahead,” he says.

Carefully, Adrian prises up the tape holding the top end of the package together. He unfolds the tissue paper, and pulls out a small metal figurine.

It’s a cat. Stylized, pieced together out of scraps of metal, with bright button-eyes—and Adrian recognises the minute-hand of his gutted alarm clock, now repurposed as a tail. 

“So,” Dan prods, after a moment, “uh, do you like it?”

Adrian realises that he’s been staring, expressionless, at the little metal cat, and he blinks and looks up. Then he allows a smile to break across his face.

Dan spent his afternoon making this. For him. For no other reason than to make him smile. That isn’t something Adrian will even understand; nor is it something he’ll ever be able to take for granted.

It’s not something he ever wants to jeopardize again, either. He will never be certain of it. It’s stupid of him to rely upon it, he knows. And yet he needs it—needs _Dan_ —so desperately it makes him dizzy.

He meets Dan’s eyes. “I like it very much,” he says. Then, a thought occurs to him, and he frowns slightly. “Just one question,” he adds. “What does it do?”

Dan smiles back at him. “Absolutely nothing.”


End file.
